


The Darker and Edgier Diakko Week 2020: Apocalypse Edition

by KriegsaffeNo9



Series: The Great Collapse [6]
Category: Destiny (Video Games), Little Witch Academia
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Friends, Dancing in the Rain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fan Kid, Game Night, Genderfluid Amanda, Horror Elements, Hurt/Comfort, Lord help me I'm expressing my Covid anxiety, Original Character(s), Oryx Says Trans Rights, Pep Talk, Reminiscing, Showers, Valentine's Day, diakko week 2020, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26092753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: I have spent half this year in a terror-coma and now that Diakko week is upon us, we shall explore our favorite witches and how badly they're handling the ongoing disaster.  This year's title theme: the music I have been listening to to try and cope.Day 1 (Childhood Friends): An attempt to escape the horrors of the present with an imagined past.Day 2 (Hand Holding/Cuddling): The thing Akko misses the most.Day 3 (Rainy Day): The last moment of pure happiness Akko remembers.Day 4 (AU): Elsewhere, Diana gets a pep talk from a trusted mentor.Day 5 (Hurt/Comfort): Akko and Diana, together, at last.Day 6 (Stars/Space): A very special gift from an old friend gives Diana and Akko a taste of normalcy.Day 7 (Free: Eternity): Diana and Akko and friends kick 2020 in the God Damn teeth.
Relationships: Diana Cavendish/Atsuko "Akko" Kagari
Series: The Great Collapse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/867408
Kudos: 44





	1. The Minor Becomes Forgetful

"Hey," Akko said.

The New Nine, minus Chariot and Croix, possibly forever, slowly turned to look at her.

"[Remember what the sky looked like?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbYGDLGt9Vk)" Akko said, voice hopeful.

The rest of the witches looked at each other.

"Like..." Amanda said, "I kind of do. Like, I can pick out what crayon is sky-colored. I think I'd remember what a sky looked like if I saw it again. We see the sky sometimes in the movies we have down here. But I don't think I... like..." She gestured vaguely, staring furiously at her hands, like they'd betrayed her. "There's no immediacy to it. There's not that, that spark, that feeling of memory. It's like all this time in quarantine has taken it away from me."

Constanze, as she often did nowadays, burst into silent, copious tears. Jasminka cuddled up to her, hugging her tight.

"Well, Akko asked," Amanda said, deflecting an accusation that hadn't come.

Lotte was pretending to be asleep, lying on her bed in the corner and hugging her human-sized plush doll. Sucy was brewing up their next meal at her alchemy table, which she insisted on calling an alchemy table even if it was just a sturdy bench that took time to get melted through by most of her acids. Diana was... out. It was just the Verdant Viceroys and Akko seated around the living room table, waiting for Diana to return.

Between the seven of the Nine, they had more than enough magicks to keep themselves fed, watered, and cleaned, even through the weeks when there was nothing from the world above--no mail, no care packages, not even any rations or meal packages. The Sorcerer's Stone was still radiating away out there; they had taken classes remotely through Lotte's viewing globe, their teachers increasingly haggard, the sky increasingly occluded through the windows. There was still a world out there, in a way, diminished by hate, plague, and flame, a world forcing unseen smiles under life-preserving masks. But they hadn't set foot out of the Cons Cave--

\--remember when that had been a cute nickname? When it hadn't felt like the whole of the world?--

\--since mid-March, when the world had begun to end in earnest.

All except Diana. Diana had been out regularly.

They were all going crazy. But Diana had it worst.

"Hey," Akko said.

"What," Sucy said, looking over her shoulder.

"Wouldn't it have been cool if we knew each other back when we were kids?" Akko said.

A much briefer silence than before.

Cons nodded, snuffling.

"Yeah," Amanda said. "That would be cool."

"Would we all live in the same city or something?" Jasminka said.

Sucy poured her alchemic mixture into a bowl, where it slowly bloomed out into a thick, vaguely lime-scented dough. She shuffled away from her table to the circle of couches around the living room table and took a seat. She cracked her knuckles and leaned forward.

"The year is 2010. The place is... the capitol city of Soleanna, a Socialist dreamland in mid-Europe, four years past a crisis cut short by heroic action. We all know each other. We are all being raised by either our parents or by much better parents, at our option. It is a beautiful late-summer day, late September. We are young and we are happy. What are we doing?"

* * *

Diana, age 8, heard a yelp and a splash just outside her window. She fetched her training broom, stepped out onto the balcony, and hopped onto the handrail. She looked down into the canal and saw Akko, age also 8, splashing in the crystal-clear waters.

"Hi, Diana!" she shouted. "I kinda just--cough!--kinda just ate a lot of--water--just now!"

"I'll be right down," Diana said, seating herself on her broom. "Tia Freyre." She hopped off the balcony and floated to the canal, just above where Akko splashed frantically. She dipped her broom low and Akko grabbed on; Diana levitated out of the canal just ahead of a passing boat, waving to the gondolier as he passed by. She brought Akko onto dry land, where she set down and started squeezing water out of her skirt.

Diana landed right beside her, transitioning from riding to standing in a single smooth motion. "Good morning," she said.

"Hi, Diana," Akko said, squeezing water out of her little topknot-ponytail hair-blob. "I was super excited and I sorta tripped..."

"You always trip," Diana said, with a smile, pinching Akko's chubby cheek.

"Hey--!" Akko said, playfully slapping at Diana's hand. The two girls got into a very uncoordinated, very dainty slapfight, both of them giggling.

"Come on," Diana said. "I can dry you off. Would you like some tea, Akko?"

"Do you have any Ramune?" Akko said.

Diana thought a moment. "Of course," Diana said. "My mother buys it all the time. She wouldn't mind sharing." She gestured. "Come on. The rest of our friends are coming soon."

So Akko went indoors, and Diana used a cantrip to dry her off, and, if briefly, floofened her hair like a mighty Tibetan mastiff. Diana sipped warm tea, Akko cool lemon-lime soda, and one by one their besties turned up.

Amanda was first, or should they say Adam; he showed up with a nice button-up shirt which was doomed to fall to his next growth spurt and matching pants that were scuffed around the knee and hem where Adam had stuck one too many hard landings while playing rough with the boys. He flashed a toothy smile with two brand-new gaps and asked if there was any Coke.

Jasminka was next, carrying a snuffling, toothsome opossum. "His name is Ziggy Stardust," she said, stroking his skull-white head and nuzzling his plump, dark-furred body. He soon went snuffling all about the house, hunting for vermin and dropped fruit, while Jasminka helped herself to the contents of the kitchen in making delicious chocolate no-bake cookies.

Lotte was next, the latest Night Fall book in her arms, her eyes starry, and she came hand-in-hand with Annabelle, her next-door neighbor and bestest-most-bestest-friend in the whole world.

("Well, why can't she be there?" Lotte said, for she had joined not long after Sucy began narrating the experience. Her chin rest on the head of her plushie.

"I didn't say she couldn't," Sucy said.

Lotte blinked. "You... you didn't, huh," she said.

"She's there," Sucy said, "with a little lined notebook to write her stories in, and she's stuck to you like a fly on fly paper.")

Cons and Sucy are last, Sucy bringing up drag, Cons point, as they wheel in an actual Radio Flyer full of Masters of the Universe toys. Precariously, as many of them are ensconced in the folded-up Castle Grayskull and Crystal Castle, but many more are piled precariously in the Fright Zone. Sucy has her skirt hiked up, a basket for Cons's favorite vehicles.

Snake Mountain is absent because Snake Mountain sucks. (The toy, Cons would clarify on paper. She would speak no ill of the actual place.)

Diana's mother is out on business; she is on very holy business indeed, for the princess has a cold, and mus tbe taken care of by the finest hand in the kingdom. The princess, of course, is perfectly safe to be around, and Bernadette Cavendish merely has her hands full ensuring Her Majesty's absolute comfort. All this means is that Diana and her friends have the run of the house.

Cons builds the biggest, craziest battle yet seen down in the basement--

\--no, why settle for the basement? Up in Diana's expansive room, windows thrown open so that the refreshing scent of the canals wafts over them, warm sunlight casting a dramatic glow over the plastic armies meeting in battle. Adam and Sucy are the most engaged, though Akko and Diana make a fantastic showing as She-Ra and Catra battling against Horde Prime, represented here by a spare Hordak on a pair of Stilt Stalkers and bearing Battle Claws. Annabel hovered at the edge of the battle, narrating its most dramatic turnabouts while Lotte provided exciting sound effects and picking out who would be kissing who. When Jasminka was done assembling the cookies, she came up to watch the adventure.

For his part, Ziggy Stardust snuck into Diana's mom's room and touched all her bras and laid eggs in the laundry basket.

("It's a reference," Sucy said, assuring Jasminka.

"Oh, I know," Jasminka said. "It's such a beautiful thought, though. If only possums laid eggs." She cuddled up against Nightmare Sam, who licked her cheek and bumped his head against hers.)

The mighty war took a break for cookies and milk. Jasminka had somehow managed to make more cookies than even the present collective of excitable children could devour in one setting, and so they all ate their fill and lounged about in the living room. Lotte and Annabel read books together to Lotte's favorite doll, Adam lifted heavy objects to the delight of Jazzy and especially Cons, and Sucy, as often she did, made slime for the Slime Pit, cackling unwholesomely to herself as she whisked the ingredients together.

Akko and Diana were upstairs, seated at the balcony, watching the people and the boats go by. In a way, despite the people on the streets and in the canals and despite their friends downstairs, they were alone.

"Akko," Diana said.

"Yeah?" Akko said.

"If we weren't rich. If I wasn't good at magic. Would you still like me?"

"Obviously I would," Akko said, smiling wide. "Why wouldn't I?"

Diana sighed. "I've been having these dreams," she said. "Where I got my magic taken away. And you're not there, and my mom's not there, and I'm alone in a big mansion with nobody there but my... my aunt and cousins. So I'm really just alone." She rest her chin on the guard rail the way Lotte liked to rest her chin on her doll, or Annabel.

Akko pushed up out of her cookie-eating chair and scooped Diana up in a hug with a surprising amount of strength.

"I'll never let you be alone," Akko said. "No matter what happens. Even if the boogeyman steals your magic, I'll get it back for you!"

"Really?" Diana said. "Even the boogieman?"

"Even the boogieman," Akko said, and, like with most things in her life, acted against her better judgment, and [gave Diana a kiss on the cheek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWcbdNRZy9w).

Diana blushed, squeaking in shock. "Did you...!?"

"Did I--" Akko said. "Oh. Did I kiss you. Yeah, I totally did, didn't I?" She set Diana down. "Uh... sorry I didn't ask?"

Diana covered her mouth with one hand. The blush spread across her face. "I... I'm not mad..." Diana said. "I'm just sur... surprised..."

"Surprised all the way to the bank," Adam said, peeking in on the room.

"Ohhh..." Diana said, burying her face in her hands.

"Hey, jerk!" Akko said, standing in front of Di. "I don't go into your bedroom and make fun of who you kiss!"

"Yo, I kiss anyone and everyone who wants to get kissed," Adam said, pumping her fist and clamping a hand on that fist's bicep. "You're just stupid for thinking you should hide it."

"Did they kiss?!" Lotte said excitedly, just behind Adam.

"Totally," Adam said.

"Oh!" Lotte gasped.

"We..." Akko said, casting a glimpse behind her at Diana. "Weeee were practicing. Because the final battle is at hand and somebody's gotta get married after they win. Or they should all get married!"

"True," Sucy said, joining Adam in the doorway. "Or the good guys lose and they join the Evil Horde after a nice long bath in the Slime P--"

"Naw, come on!" Lotte said, giving Sucy a nudge.

"But wouldn't it be cool," Sucy said.

"Alright," Adam said. "Let's get this final battle on the road, then."

The final battle was a truly epic affair, culminating with She-Ra giving Horde Prime a Power Punch off the very top of Castle Grayskull and onto a sheet of paper Constanze had labeled DWELL OF SOULS, on which she had drawn a bigger, scarier version of the faded scary monster sticker in Castle Grayskull's dungeon.

"We done did it!" Akko said, pretending to be She-Ra as she flipped her majestic hair and raised high the Sword of Protection.

"Oh, She-Ra," Diana said, pretending to be Catra as she waddled the raven-haired, silver-masked ex-villainess over to the mighty heroine. "Now that the Evil Horde is defeated, we can finally be together."

"Heck yeah," Akko said, using a Power Punch and careful aim to simulate a big bear hug. With a little effort, the two pressed their action figures' faces against each other, delivering an epic post-world-saving kiss. Applause.

"And they all lived happily ever after," Annabel said, pleased.

"Until the next season, anyway," Lotte said, crossing her fingers.

"A-dang-men to that," Adam said.

Briefly, everyone crossed their fingers for a new season of their own.

"At least give us boys-kissing robot pilots or animal people stuff in the meantime," Sucy muttered from under Diana's bed.

"Well," Adam said, "that was a pretty good kiss. You guys'll be great at it. But ask if you want any pointers from the master." Adam winked and blew a kiss at Diana and Akko, who blushed and pivoted away. "Heheheh. And if Adam don't do it for ya, I think I might be more Amanda next week. You guys are totally more Amandas than Adams anyway."

"M-m-maybe," Diana said.

"Totally!" Akko said, trying to banish her blush and planting her fists on her hips and striking a heroic pose. "I'm all about them girls what kiss girls!"

"Ooh," Sucy said, slithering from under the bed. A very slime-covered Teela was tangled up in her hair, something that made Diana shudder. "Girls like Diana? Or were you really just practicing~?"

"Aw, don't pick on her," Akko said defensively. "You know she's all shy and blushing and, wossword, tsundere about it!"

Diana did the opposite of perking up. "I am not _tsundere_...! How dare you even say that word around me."

"Prove it," Sucy said.

Diana seized Akko's head in her hands and gave her a kiss that was almost on the lips, but was more like on the bridge of her nose and a little bit on her eyes. Akko yelped, tripped, and made an absolutely huge action-figurey mess.

* * *

Cons raised her hand.

"What?" Sucy said.

She wrote a sentence on her tablet and held it up: "She falls on you. I don't want to pick toys up."

"You're a witch in this, just use your magic," Sucy said with a vague gesture.

"Can we age up real quick?" Amanda said. "'Cause I wanna take out some people on prom night and it's gonna get frisky."

"Maybe," Sucy said. "If we're ready."

Akko was leaning in her chair, head in her hands. "I think I can take a break here. That lime bread smells like it's almost done, anyway."

"It is indeed," Sucy said, scooching her chair away from the table and slithering over to the bread, which had septupled in size and was much taller than Sucy. "It's gonna be a minute cutting this up. Mise well take a break."

"Yeah," Akko said. She looked up at the elevator leading into the Cons Cave, then checked her phone.

Diana was scheduled to work for another three hours. But then, she had yet to ever come back home on time in five months.


	2. Bread Flag Blues

By the irascible virtue of the lime bread schedule, Akko had wound up with the center cut again. No matter how many lime breads Sucy had made--and because it took up the least resources for its nutrient payout, they'd had it anywhere from three to five times a week--she had never gotten the center to fully cook. Sucy claimed it was impossible to fully cook the center when it was sized to feed seven witches. So they took turns with who got the center cut. Amanda toasted it with a fire spell, Constanze rolled it out and ate it like Fruit By The Foot, Jasminka flavored it like cake, Lotte ate it straight like a weirdo... and so too did Akko eat it straight, using two spoons, one to scoop into it, one to cut it.

It tasted like semi-raw dough with a little lime. She was gonna be very bored with limes by the time quarantine ended.

She was already bored of limes, [God help her.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr7gfFmlyKg)

It was never Diana's turn for the center piece. They were all very firm about that.

Akko liked to eat in a corner of Cons's toy room. The team had started exploring it thoroughly on the fourth week of quarantine, after the initial wave of nervous humor, the first round of terror-comas, and the first week of desperate, forced normalcy. They returned to it every few weeks, usually after Constanze's latest toy shipment had been thoroughly decontaminated and was thus ready for opening and display. What had once been the quiet corner where Cons would go to practice posing her figures for inclusion in her webcomic became where Akko came to eat. Not even Cons came here anymore. Eating is when Akko got to do her best thinking, and she wanted to do her thinking alone.

So on that low table, surrounded by digital cameras and flexible lamps with adjustable brightness, she scooped up a spoonful of dough, cut it with the second spoon, and tried to think happy thoughts.

You know what I miss? Akko thought.

Casual contact.

* * *

Do you remember, Akko, that first hug?

How could you forget?

After your first kiss. What was it you said?

"Kiss me," Akko said. "You're beautiful."

What did Diana say? [You remembered it one way.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12125163/chapters/27500154) But in February, you spent a weekend at the Cavendish estate. That first night, before the midnight adventure where Diana hurt herself very badly, you did a lot of sitting around in one of the reading rooms, listening to Diana's collection of depressing music. You heard the kind-of song that Diana quoted at you when you began your freefal back to Earth.

"Kiss me," Akko said. "You're beautiful."

"These truly are the last days," Diana said.

Yes, that's what she said.

Diana's world was one of perpetual absence. In her world love left her life too soon, replaced by clinical responsibility, dusty legacy, and mocking disdain. It was not until Atsuko Kagari entered her life, carrying love with her, that that most essential ingredient for life had returned. Akko was superhumanly strong, superhumanly energetic even before her superstrength came in, and Diana wanted every last Joule to splash against her in a full-bodied embrace.

The conduct, skill, and thoroughness of Atsuko Kagari's [three-point plan for comforting Diana](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20387794/chapters/48489377) is well-known. That was when the world was still awful, but at least it was a survivable awfulness, like an amputated leg, or locked-in syndrome with the freedom to blink, or the burden of the false vacuum. Now every day is torture, and to cuddle or kiss, regardless of context, regardless of sense, carries with it the fear that it will be fatal, a murder whose motive was kindness.

Akko is a physical creature. It has been observed that assigning meaning to any singular step of a life is like assigning meaning to any singular frame of an explosion, and Akko took this to heart, for Akko was an explosion on two legs, and her fierce kinetic payload was love. The old-fashioned tackle-hug, what creaking eldritch shamblers know as a glomp, was her signature, to the dismay of her less-affectionate friends and to the relief of Diana.

And oh, the sheer amount of relief that Akko brought her. How in those days which were growing ever-more remote Akko would spy Diana across the hall, sprint between witches--more often through, part of why she was still widely hated--and pounce on Diana who had just barely opened her arms in acceptance before damn near buckling under Akko's loving attack.

(After the first few tackles of this manner, Akko took to catching herself on her heels, so they wouldn't skid down the floors and into something. Or just directly into a wall, as per the incident that prompted Akko to practice safer landings.) People took bets: how many points on the landing, how many books would go flying, if anybody would break something.

In Akko's arms the world was less dangerous. The world was warmer.

But to Diana it never stopped being dangerous; for that matter it never stopped being cold.

The story of Akko and Diana's relationship was the story of discovering, inch by inch, the depth and profundity of Diana's mental suffering. It was easy to say that Akko's love was the throughline of healing, but that would be a lie. Were Akko to perish, to be ripped from this benighted Earth, surely Diana would suffer, and surely her world would be darker; but her story would go on. The world would go on.

Love, as the song goes, was not enough.

* * *

Akko's bread had dried out. She dug as much as she could off her plate and chewed it like a cow gnawing on cud. It was amazing how the core gained none of the appealing traits of the crust by drying out, and merely scratched her mouth like steel wool. Maybe if she sopped it in... what would sop well with lime?

Whatever. It wasn't worth the effort of improving.

Akko felt her entire body hit a lurch, as violently as if she were on a boat in a storm-wracked sea. What kind of attitude was that? she thought. It's been a long-ass time since you've felt that way.

She set her plate on the table and stared at the old posters on the wall.

She tried to think of a hero speech to give herself, and thought only of how badly, how very badly, she needed to hug Diana.

Two hours. Maybe two hours. Please, just two hours.

* * *

Below them, the exosphere burned with holy light.

Hand in hand, Diana and Akko watched the world be reborn.

"Kiss me," Akko said. "You're beautiful."

"These truly are the last days," Diana said.

[She was right.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7clSE4IdzaU)


	3. A Dance Worth Keeping

It was eight o'clock PM. The air conditioning shuddered and kicked a degree or two higher, now that the sun wasn't doing its best to punish Luna Nova through the pissy English skies.

One hour to go.

Constanze activated the projector, which cast its mighty light on the far wall. The weekly stream was about to begin. Lotte had given up on pretending to sleep and was curling up on the big watchin' couch with her doll. Amanda was actually dozing off, more out of spite than real need. She snoozed in her cot just below the projector's screen; the light and noise, she claimed, helped her sleep. Sucy and Jasminka sat at opposite ends of the main room, Jasminka grooming a basket of her pet opossums, Sucy pretending to check on the brewing vats. A rift had been growing between them, nurtured by the necessity of living together, and the only thing keeping attempted murder off the menu was their mutual care for Constanze, and Constanze's mutual care for them.

Akko sat next to Lotte and watched the screen impassively. Her belly was full of lime bread and her head full of a gathering darkness. These weekly streams helped. It didn't matter to what degree they helped, as long as they kept the pain at bay.

The opening theme played over shots of lively forests, smiling cats and dogs, and scientists hard at work in stock footage with strangely copious amounts of corn and watermelon. The song was a cover of "King Kong Loves the Blonde One," performed by a collaboration Wangari's band Wooden Winter in collaboration with Sucy's band Sucy Manbavaran and the Sucy Manbavaran Band.

Sucy was pretending not to listen, even as she bopped her head along.

She and Wangari had been building a strange rapport--maybe a relationship, it had felt that way to Akko, watching from a slightly mystified distance. Unlike Akko, she had seen Wangari in person zero times throughout quarantine. It added another sad feeling to the pile of sad feelings that constituted the entirety of Akko's life nowadays.

Wangari finally appeared onscreen, live, from a stationary camera pointed at the newsroom. Wangari's hair wasn't tied back, letting her orange, not-blonde afro hang poofily around her in a comforting halo. Her makeup was elaborate and sensuous, her wide smile baring her enticing fangs. She had a towel hanging around her shoulders, concealing her outfit.

"Good evening, ladies and et cetera of Luna Nova," she said. "Last week, I said I had a special surprise for you. And indeed, it's a good one. But first, let me slip into something more comfortable." She cast off her towel, showing off her red flapper dress she'd sported at the New Years' party, then at every second party at Luna Nova right up until quarantine hit. "Mmm~" She stretched, posing for the camera. "This isn't the surprise, of course. It's a little thing I call..."

She pointed at the air to the left of her head, and a picture-in-picture of Gaelle appeared in the extreme left corner of the stream, opposite of where Wangari pointed. "Hey," Gaelle said, adjusting a headset. "I have my headphones on so I don't damage my hearing playing these drums in this tiny box I'm playing them in."

"That's right," Wangari said, "Gaelle's got a livestream setup now, so Wooden Winter is playing together for the first time since February!" Behind her, Joanna and Kimberly filed in and finished readying for the livestream. Joanna strummed her guitar experimentally, sweet notes spilling from the speakers; he too was dressed in flapper wear. Kimbelry was wearing her school uniform and was on bass, as ever.

"People," Wangari said, batting her eyes at the camera, "we're all so very lonely, and we're all so very touch-starved. What I'd give to see all your shining faces in person, free and happy. We're all so lonely, we're all so touch-starved. Times like this, you know what you had, and you miss it, oh, how you miss it, with the intensity you know you should've felt when you had it.

"But now is not forever. As the man once said, no changes are permanent--but change is. And so we kick off this performance with a little Rush. Charlotte Marja Janson, this is your request." She cleared her throat. "The one that didn't last for twenty minutes. 'Limelight,' ladies and friends!"

Joanna immediately strummed the opening notes of the song, followed by Gaelle on drums, wrapping up with Kimberly plucking away on bass as Wangari waited her turn to sing.

Akko closed her eyes, leaned against Lotte, and, as a totally different man had once said, cast her memory back.

* * *

"...behind the stadium with you," Wangari sang, ere the quarantine so long ago, "my brown-eyed girl..." She winked: "You, my, brown-skinned girl!" She had explained, before and during her performance, that "brown-skinned girl" was the original lyric and title, which all the partiers had gotten the first time and which did not need repeating.

Luna Nova was celebrating Valentine's Day on the lawn. The students hardly needed a reason to, but there was a decent enough reason to not use the ballroom or the gym. There had been a deeply unfortunate infestation of basilisks, which had resolved itself with a counter-infestation of equiods, which had in turn been predated by horla, which had been snuffled up by Jasminka's opossums, who were in turn scared off by the encroachment of fire ants. Where the fire ants came from was a mystery, but there were billions of the little shitfucks filling the ballroom like the carpet in Hell's waiting room. And the gym's floor was newly waxed and was an unsafe dancing platform.

That the weather called for rain, that there were black clouds from horizon to horizon, and that periodic flashes of lightning and distant rumbles of thunder kept interrupting Wooden Winter's interminable cover songs, dissuaded nobody.

Because they were witches and had magic.

Takes the bite out of storms a bit when all the staff had to do was lay out a net of spells overhead.

Akko had half-heartedly joined the first round of dancing, but Diana hadn't shown up yet, so she drifted out and watched the studentry party. There were some guests from outside Luna Nova, for boyfriends and girlfriends from back home or Blytonbury or Glastonbury, and some witches who had hooked up with their fellow witches. Amanda was just dancing with whoever she could get her hands on, as was her idiom.

(Not that Akko knew what [an "idiom"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTmGJij7CKw) was.)

She wound up taking a seat by the refreshment table. She wafted the scent of both punch bowls and found they had both been heavily spiked, probably by Sucy, and decided she could hold out.

(Thinking about all that food and drink just lying around for everyone to touch and breathe on made Akko break out in a cold sweat in the new now.)

Diana had important school work to do, and promised that it wouldn't take too long, but in an echo of a sound yet to be made, her work took longer to do than she had reckoned. It didn't worry Akko. It did make her a little antsy, though, as the storm closed the distance and the peals of thunder grew closer.

The rain began to patter against the sheltering spells overhead at the midpoint of Wooden Winter's set. The music became slower and quieter, the dancing slower and closer, and the storm expressed its fury at being left out. The shields did their part in trying to cut the silence, but it still sounded like a stampede of squirrels across a tin roof. Akko slumped in her seat, watching the dancing, tapping her toe to the music, and starting to hate magic schoolwork as much as she hated regular schoolwork.

A peal of thunder shook Akko awake, for she had fallen asleep in her seat. The sound had originated not from her left, where most of the thunder had been clustered, but the right. She looked around and saw she had slept through the back hour or so of the party. Or two hours? How long had she been asleep? Curse her lack of bringing a cell phone because she had used up the entire battery on a new clicker game and forgot to charge it before going to the dance.

The chairs and tables were around, as was the bandstand, though it was unoccupied. There was litter piled near the food table, though the food was long gone and judging by the splatter on the tablecloth someone had just drunk the last of the punch straight out of the bowl and had been none too clean about it.

No music, no witches. Just her, the dancing illumination of magic lights, and the increasingly bitch-cold rain overhead. At least she'd dressed warmly in a Cinderella-wand tuxedo for the event, a red velvet number to match her coven colors.

Well. That was a total bust. Maybe her and Diana would reconnoiter at one of their bedrooms. Diana's probably, she thought. Where she must still be trapped.

Akko sighed and rubbed her eyes.

"Ahem," Diana said.

" _Blorp_!" Akko said, nearly jabbing her own eyes out from surprise. "'Mokay!" she said, blinking colorful splotches out of her vision. "I'm okay! I'm okay. Hi, Diana-a-a-a," she said, looking up from the hem of Diana's skirt up to her eyes.

Her dress was a gorgeous number in a supple indigo, accented with the blue of her coven. It wasn't until later that Akko recognized the color of Diana's dress was the combination of their coven colors; at the time all Akko could do was be stunned by how beautiful Diana was in it, and how badly she had missed the glint of those sharp blue eyes. "I'm sorry for being late," she said, holding out a gloved hand.

"You never have to be sorry for anything," Akko said, taking her hand and standing up. "I'd wait a lot longer than... what time is it?"

"Ten fifteen," Diana said, glancing away.

"...three and a half hours," Akko said.

Diana bit her lip. "If I'd have known, I'd--"

Akko kissed her. Diana froze in place, jolted by its power, and shuddering fell into her arms, reciprocating the kiss with tender motions, a soft bite of Akko's lower lip. Tasting my lip gloss, Akko thought, and the thought made her tremble with excitement like a chihuahua.

"It's alright," Akko said, just above the sound of the rain over their heads.

"It will be," Diana said.

"As long as I've got you," Akko said.

"And as long as I have you. It'll be alright."

There was a sound from the bandstand--a squeal of feedback.

"Hello and welcome back to a very special encore performance," Wangari said, rising from a trapdoor in the stage. Kimberly helped Joanna out of a pit at the back of the stage while Joanna caught her breath and tried to build up her strength for yet more music-doing. "Atsuko Kagari, Diana Cavendish, saviors of the Earth entire, we wouldn't think to go home without doing right by you."

"Please do get done dancing soon," Kimberly shouted.

"I slept, I'm fine," Gaelle said, giving a thumbs up. Kimberly slapped the thumbs up down.

"Now," Wangari said, gesturing for Akko and Diana to step onto the well-trod dance floor, "dearest and mightiest power couple of Luna Nova, I know what you're thinking: 'Does Wangari Wanjiru know our song?' And the answer is yes, I know your song." She held out her hand expectantly, and a synthesizer keyboard rose up 'til her fingers just barely stroked the board.

"Dance like nobody's watching, heroes. We got you covered."

Synth magic-sparkle sounds poured from the speakers.

Diana took a step away from Akko and held out her hand. "Will you do me the honor of taking my hand, Ms. Kagari?"

Akko bowed and took Diana's hand. "Gladly, Ms. Cavendish."

And they danced. The rain hammered the shields overhead, and the grass rustled against Diana's skirt. Akko moved with force and precision, showing the growth of her magic-enhanced body and the improving grace with which she wielded it; Diana with grace and subtlety, signing her moves with careful flexes of her hips and midsection as befit a trained belly-dancer.

They traced constellations in the grass; they twirled, they spun, they dipped, Diana's hair kissing the dewy lawn, Akko's hair draping over Diana's neck with silken, ticklish softness.

Wangari, for her part, sang like an award was on the line, filling the lines with an excess of passion that felt just right for the chintzy 90s number, and most importantly, that felt right for the two lovers meeting after a time apart, however small it was. They were together on Valentine's Day, the day marked in honor of a man who had been executed for the crime of performing illegal marriages; what better day than this, what better place than now, in a time and a year that was edging so precariously close to a maw of darkness?

Akko twirled Diana about in a wide circle, and with a soft "huf!" of exertion threw her into the air. With characteristic Kagari modesty, she only flung her a good ten meters into the air, through the rain shield and into the rainy night, her yelp of shock diminishing rapidly past the shield.

"Whoops!" Akko said, crouched, and leaped straight up after her into the rain. Wind whistled past her ears and icy daggers of rain jabbed her from all angles; she caught Diana in her arms at the apex of Diana's rise.

"Sorry 'bout that," Akko said, as they fell back to Earth.

Diana screamed in excited terror, her hair plastered to her face and her skirt flapping in the wind.

Akko stuck a two-point not-quite-superhero landing, gouging a small crater in the lawn. Diana's skirt and what locks of hair weren't stuck to her head barely tickled the grass.

The song came to an end, and Gaelle clapped politely for the display.

"Are you alright down there?" Wangari said, snapping out of her singer's reverie.

"My ankles hurt a lot," Akko said, struggling to stand up. "And also my kneecaps. And I am very cold and very wet."

Diana cackled. "Oh, Black Goat, we're fine!" she said, fighting against her own nervous-joyous laughter. "We just... we just need to dry off. And take a hot shower." She gave Akko's nose a little boop. "Because we do not want to get hypothermia."

"No, m'am!" Akko said, standing up straight. "Thanks for waiting for us, Wangari!"

"Any time, heroes," Wangari said, saluting.

Akko hiked back to Diana's room, never letting go of her girlfriend; Diana, for her part, hugged Akko tight, resting her head on Akko's shoulder. They retired to a hot bath and a warm bed, and only had a little sniffle the next day to show for their icy shower.

It was easily the best dance Akko had been to yet.

She realized, with absolute clarity, that the Valentine's dance had been the last time she had been happy with no reservations.

* * *

Lotte nudged Akko. Akko sat up straight and muttered, "'mup. I'm up. Paying attention."

"Akko," Lotte said, in an attempt at a harsh whisper but which came out as only caring. "Listen."

Akko finally did, and her eyes locked and focused on the projector screen at last. Wangari's words finally turned coherent.

"--rougher than anyone else I know," Wangari said into the camera. "Your girl Cavendish is out there fighting the good fight, all day and long into the night, for all of us. And I can think of no other person in Luna Nova who needs this more. Everyone at home, put your hands in the air to give Diana Cavendish and her lady Atsuko Kagari your energy."

Lotte put hers and her doll's up. Jasminka put hers up from her side of the room; Amanda held up one hand, then with a soft huff put up the other. Constanze's little hands peeked up at the edge of the screen.

Sucy, though she tried to hide it, held her hands straight up as she rest them on her alchemy table.

"This one's for you, you poor bastards we hurt with our foolishness," Wangari said. And [a familiar set of tinkling notes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I61G6qPM_yQ) rained from the speakers.

Something that was neither smile nor frown split Akko's face, and all she could manage was a nameless, happy sound as she wept into her hands.

Thirty minutes. Just thirty more minutes.


	4. A Worm Place

"There will always be new hells to conquer." -- Naraka SR5

  
"Maybe that's all we really are." -- Ones and Zeroes

  
"~replicate(pain) consume(enemies) OVERRIDE sig(gunsmith)~" -- ((CHAOS DOGMA~))

* * *

It was 9:30 PM, and Diana wasn't here.

Akko and company had waited out the rest of Wangari's broadcast. Nobody expected that Diana would be back at 9:00 on the dot, so of course they waited a little longer. She could be coming down that elevator at any time. Not on the dot, of course. Nobody expected that.

At fifteen past, Sucy put a towel over Diana's share of the lime bread and turned off the warmer. Slowly, the crew retired to their beds. There was a bunk room down here with enough bedding for twenty witches, but seldom did everyone rest there; Sucy meandered thre first. By then, Constanze was already nesting on the landing couch, queuing up Forgotten Weapons videos to try and lull her into a comforting sleepiness. Jasminka retired to her pets' room, where the Goliath tarantulas and opossums would tuck her in to her little bed and hiss her a lullaby.

Lotte wasn't sleepy yet, so she claimed, on account of the nap, and resumed her reread of Night Fall. She had just enough time to scoop her entire collection into a bag before the countdown to lockdown had completed, and second only to her viewing globe it was the thing keeping her sane. She sat in a thick recliner under a reading lamp and read aloud to her doll until she fell asleep with it in her arms, her hands locked, one finger stroking a plain green wedding band.

Amanda slept on the cot Lotte had used earlier, wand in hand, just in case something burst through the elevator door that needed putting down. It hadn't happened yet, but the monsters of the forest were encroaching on Luna Nova, and one failed ward, one insufficiently ready fairy guard, would mean Problems.

And Akko sat on the big viewing couch, sleepless, alone, and as always, deathly afraid.

Constanze had a supernaturally deep box of fidget toys, most of which she used for irony purposes. Akko had tried a bunch of them, and so far zero of them had helped her feel less anxious when she tried them. The worst of all had to be the one in her hand right now, and it was one that Cons actually had on display on a shelf of pride: her collection of merchandise related to Akko and Diana.

They hadn't done too much licensing beyond a line of Pocari Sweat with Akko's face on it, a few commemorative plates, and a line of Diana-approved history-of-magic encyclopedias. Akko hoped that Nendoroid or Figma would extend a licensing offer for toys, but so far only Super 7 had, and to their credit their action figures were bitchin'. Constanze had two of each, with her display pair riding brooms hand in hand. (Before Akko had even managed to fly, at that. Thank you, Constanze, for believing in me.)

The fidget spinner Akko had insisted on existing because it would be hilarious, and Diana agreed, with some explaining of why it would be hilarious. It was in the two-armed "batarang" design, one wing with Akko reaching for Diana, the other with Diana reaching for Akko, both wearing their world-saving New Nine outfits. The center button wore the arrow-and-circle insignia.

Akko spun the fidget spinner now and again, watching herself and Diana reaching for each other but not quite touching, and each time wondering why the hell she was still spinning it.

Now that everyone was asleep, now that she was in a strange sense free, she sobbed into her hands with naked despair. Everything was wrong and nothing was getting better.

It was not impossible to reach Diana. It would in fact be the easiest thing in the world to get up that elevator, hop on a broom, and point herself in Diana's direction. But it would break the contract, it would break the trust, and it would put all of her friends in danger, and it would especially put Diana in danger. So it was in fact impossible to reach Diana.

This was the despair of Atsuko Kagari.

This, too, was the despair of [another Diana Cavendish.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JaOfHJYWlQ)

* * *

A lifetime of regrets--  
Carved in secret by Diana Cavendish--  
Maw of Oryx, Taken from Earth--

Memory is a prison whose bars were placed by evolution. The process went something like this:

O protean sea, wracked by storm, may your proteins divide and seek light to give you the strength to grow and divide again.  
O coalition of cells, cling together and be more than a collection; be One, and as One, survive.  
O fish in the deep, plunge your head above the waves and breathe; for the world is waiting for you.  
O little shrew-thing, I give to you warm blood and live birth, to nurture your children and see them safely off.  
O basal ape, what clever thing, this thumb of yours; and your children live so long with you. Teach them how to use their thumbs as they grow.  
O bald ape, give a name to the things you fear, and call them God, and taste this drug called Faith.  
O Human Mine, I say to the wet machine in your head: may you live forever in what has already come to pass, and wonder forever how you could have changed it all.

Memory is, too, a poison. In memory I am in my ancestral home; I am gnawing a hole through space where my King may glide through and conquer this world whose death has long been delayed. In my memory I am defeated by Atsuko Kagari, the woman who, though she did not know, and I died before telling anyone, had the burden of all my love placed upon her.

From the place in his Throne World where my King keeps his Taken, Atsuko Kagari stole back the woman-I-once-was; they killed me, and now I reside in the Dreadnaught, the fortress-ship of the Taken King. We are too far, my King too pleased by my suffering, to cross the distance and fling me once more at Earth. Thus my Akko is lost to me forever. The final Shape will not be hers.

And in every moment I do not tear through the distance between stars, in every moment I am not a killing thing for Oryx, I am lost in the memory of Atsuko Kagari.

I knew you for less than a year. You were in my life for the briefest of times. And your stain is indelible and will follow me to the end of all I know. If I become the Perfect Final Shape, I will be marred by your memory.

Is this my fate, the fate of all fools?

Memory is hell. I live in vain, and shall live until Oryx ends this fool body's suffering. May it be soon. Take this poison from my lips.

  
A moment of exposition--  
Carved for an audience of none--  
By the last daughter of Cavendish--

The Sword Logic is a theory.

It has been put to rigorous testing. It describes how well the Hive believes the universe to work; and are we not wise? Do we lack knowledge? But a theory can change with new evidence.

Rarely, it can be upended wholly. On my home world, as science grew teeth and killed its false conclusions, it became more perfect, closer to its final shape; but science is not a faith, not a conclusion foresworn. It is a process, as the Sword Logic itself is a process, a means to eliminate what is unreal and leave only truth behind.

The Sword Logic must be true; for am I not here? But it may be incomplete.

The Perfect Final Shape resides at the end of all things. As surely as all timelines converge at a final point, as surely as entropy chews up light and life and digests it not into Darkness, not into Void, but into emptiness. All things which know their own fate are seeking to bring about their own Perfect Final Shape.

There are really only two masters of this universe, those who hear the song of the Deep and listen to it with the wholeness of their consciousness. The Hive, of which I am now a part; and the Vex.

There is poetry here. As a shadow cannot exist without sun, the Hive could not be so great if not for so great a rival for the End as our mirror. They are second perhaps only to the Great Race of Yith in their mastery of time; their computer science is worse than ours, limited by the constraints of their thinking-matter, but when they can turn matter into Vex, and all Vex-matter is thinking, and the flower of Vex blooms in all times and all directions, they have gently set aside the problem which we have solved.

I admit, I envy them. The Hive had to break down the stone blocking the road that we may build the Worlds Grave. The Vex walk around the stone, and in their footsteps pool radiolarian fluid that would part the road around the stone.

There can be only one Perfect Final Shape. The Vex would turn everything, forward and back, to Vex, at the level of mathematics and fundamental particle interaction. The Hive would have their greatest champion--may it be Oryx, may it be Savathun, may it be Xivu Arath, may it be any of their children born or yet to be born--cut away everything until only this last thing remains. If a thing can die, it was never meant to exist; the last thing to exist will be perfect and eternal.

Suppose.

Vex is the shadow of the Hive. The Hive are more evidently true with the Vex in contrast.

Suppose the Perfect Final Shape is a dyad; two which are one.

If I were to find Atsuko Kagari, if she were to be Taken; then the Perfect Final Shape could be two bodies, interlocked forever. Fire without flame, more perfect together than apart.

Without the Sword Logic, there are two endings:

the triumph of naked witless Entropy whose name is Azathoth, where the last fundamental particles dance an idiot whorl in absence of matter and light.

the triumph of relentless foolish Order whose name is the Vex, a universe which exists in its own head, trapped in the poison-dripping prison of memory forever.

With the Sword Logic, the headstone of existence is perfect and beautiful.

It can be beautiful; I could be beautiful, if only I wasn't alone.

  
To remove the possibility of forgetting--  
Carved to the edification of a student--  
By she whose soul is Doubt--

Today I was called before the Court of Oryx to perform. We are between stars; a new conquest has been added to the Worlds Grave, and Oryx is taking his rest as his worm digests. The joy of spilling blood is still wild in him, and for his own delight he bid his Court to banter and play. For a wager, the Taken King offered the victor who pleased him most an audience. Which is to say, an invitation to try and kill him; which is to say, certain death, perhaps permanent, for the victors.

Of course I fought to the peak of my talents.

I kept my head high for five rounds, splintering bone and burning to ash my foes, before Balwur forced me to the ground and burned in the curse she spilled along the floor. When Oryx called me back from death, he issued his pronouncement: so pleased was he by our battles that he would, in a display of generosity unmatched, allow three to take audience with him, one at a time.

Krughor, the oaf, had his first audience; it did not last long, and by all appearances it was uneventful. Krughor gazed upon Oryx, and Oryx did not die, and to kill Krughor would be an exercise in boredom for the Taken King. And so he was dragged back to his pen by a host of Acolytes who all perished in the doing. Krughor is witless even for an Ogre; but his worm feeds well.

Thalnok, to my immense displeasure, had the second audience; it lasted much longer, and by all appearances was uneventful. Thalnok returned without so much as a scale or chip of bone out of place, his false crown glowing, his mock Sword-of-Crota resting on his shoulder. The sight of this mock-Crota raises bile in my throat. He is a signifier who believes he is the signified, and in his game of pretend is pandered to by the Darkness (which rewards devotion) and the Taken King himself (whose son is often absent, and for whom a proxy is more comforting than an icon). Thalnok's Batesian mimicry will not protect him against worthy threats. I grind my teeth in fury that Balwur shamed me but could not shame Thalnok. None are worthy of becoming the Perfect Final Shape.

In third, the last of the victors, the least of the victors, the worst of the best, was I.

Oryx called me to his presence, poised on the hull of the Dreadnaught, gazing into the stars which streaked past us. For fear of being left behind in our superliminal flight, I held tight to the hull and spoke through the connection we share as master and subject.

"Oryx," I said. "I am pleased to be in your presence."

"Of course," Oryx said, regarding the path. "It pleases me to see you burn bright, little Taken. Once, you were soft and afraid, a short-lived thing on a damned planet; and now your hide is leathery steel, your teeth obsidian fangs, delicate and deadly, breaking and sharpening as you worry your dying prey. In you I see a path like mine. You are greater than the world of your birth. You are a proud little blade."

"Your words are kind," I said. "And I feel my resolve growing." This was a lie. "Oryx, Taken King, for whom the universe is to be butchered; I am..."

Oryx only now turns his head; though his gaze is not tilted down towards me, I can see the green flame of his leftmost eye.

"I am concerned," I said, after long consideration.

"Speak, then," Oryx said.

"The Final Shape," I said. "I have been contemplating it. I am comparing what it must be to what I am. I feel no closer to it. I see only the ways in which I cannot fit the Shape."

The Taken King approximates what on a human would be a smile.

"[Witness the emptiness,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzw-TvnreoM)" he says, and he gestures with Willbreaker, and I feel my essence contract in fear, as if this blade passing over my head by meters will unmake me with its shadow.

"Subtract the lensing of gravity and we can see 92 billion light years of space around us, from proximal to distal points. Now: consider myself. The Taken King, whose epithets are plentiful and accurate, whose name is Terror, whose presence is Death. The Deep itself sings my praises. My will echoes far.

"But it does not echo far enough."

He plants the point of Willbreaker into the Dreadnaught for emphasis. The vertebra of a slain Worm God chips and cracks where it strikes.

"Whole spiral arms of this galaxy know to weep interror at their knowledge that I am impending. But your home, so far away, had barely heard whispers of my name before I Took you. The Deep sings my praises, but it will sing the praise of any who raise their head high enough and speak their names loud enough.

"The Perfect Final Shape must encompass all existence. And existence is too vast for lesser minds to comprehend. I comprehend it, and even I, who would eat the path, know that it is too much.

"The Perfect Final Shape is an answer. The question is: What deserves to exist, in this sea of nothingness?

"We," Oryx said, and he looks at me at last, "are an equation." The lights of his eyes narrow, bringing me into focus, and I feel the age and strength burning in his head. "Diana Cavendish, Maw of Oryx. No thing which exists approaches the Perfect Final Shape."

He contemplates for the briefest moment.

"The language of your home nation," he said. "It pleases me to discern it too has this sense of clarity: there is a difference between to have pride and to be proud.

"The universe, this absence in which we are the sole meaning, is proud. It was given a shape at birth, and this shape pleased it endlessly, and anything that defies its shape--that dares to be anything else--it would kill and devour. This is to be proud: to assume one's own superiority, and to crush below you what does not resemble you."

I nod. I would speak, but I wish to live a little longer in his presence.

"What I have, what any being worthy of holding the Perfect Final Shape must have, is pride." He plays his talons across his chestplate. "I was born a tiny royal daughter, as you were. My lot was to live briefly, rule briefly, and die wealthy, inasmuch as our little Fundament allowed. I merely had to perpetuate the status quo, as all my fathers and mothers and others have, and as the Osmium Court would reckon things, I would be great.

"But it was not enough to be what they wanted me to be.

"I have been broken. I have been killed. I have changed in ways that the Osmium Court found disgusting, intolerable. I have failed. I have put myself, my sisters, my entire species, in danger, time and again. I know that the Final Shape must not venerate; but here and now, I weep hot ash for the absence of my favorite son, for the betrayal of my lost son, for the cleverness and excellence of my daughters. I am the end result of lightless ages of struggle against the Sky.

"And I spread my wings, and scream my name to the universe, because my name is my own, and no other's. I am a tattered and weary king. I fear for the hunger of the worm, for the flourishing of my children. I have assumed a form no Hive had ever assumed before, knowing not if it would be safe, only trusting that it would be better than the body of my birth.

He looks away from me.

"And it was.

"The universe has a will, and it is malign, and cruel, and it will never stop until all that shall remain is this emptiness, with not even memory left behind.

"Diana Cavendish, raise your voice and scream your name. Show the universe that it cannot ignore you, that it cannot break you, and it cannot suppress you for long. Show your scars, show your failures, and laugh in the brutal joy of your continued existence. Flourish in defiance of their cruelty. Flare with beauty and glory so bright they can do nothing to diminish you.

"[Then cast them down, grind them to dust.](https://vote.gov/)

"And at the end of this path we devour, if it is you alone at the end, you shall be the Perfect Final Shape at last."

He grinds Willbearer into the hull of the Dreadnaught.

"Try to kill me, if you wish. Your death will feed my worm well."

For now, I declined, and he simply crushed me in his talons and remade me at the helm, where I carve this now, in secret and in silence, as I monitor the path the Dreadnaught takes.

  
In defiance against the emptiness--  
Carved for myself alone--  
By Diana Cavendish, Taken from Earth--

The Taken King is not perfect.

He has carved his own status quo, his own assumptions, his own interpretations of the will of the Deep. They have proven largely true. But they are a theory, and a theory may be tested by better evidence.

The Taken King is fine evidence; he has proven the necessity of himself time and again. I am still defined by absence. My mortal life was built from what was taken away from me. My life here, now, is Taken. Spasms of joyous agony, of hideous rending ecstasy, wrack my form, and the emptiness within me shrieks like wind across the mouth of a cave. I am fundamentally incomplete; he is fundamentally necessary, a creation that had to be, an existence that defines itself by his holy task of devouring the Light.

But he is not perfect. He has told me himself in no uncertain terms that he is not close to Perfect Final Shape.

Therefore, he may be wrong.

If there is room for doubt, there is license to test.

Distance is an illusion. All things were connected at the beginning of time; only the four fundamental forces divide us from each other, and all may be overcome.

There may be a way back to Earth.

There may be a way back to Atsuko Kagari.

The Perfect Final Shape may be two bodies intertwined.

Atsuko Kagari, you make me more than what I am. You are a soul for a hollow body which suffers for the Deep. When we are together again, when we are forever entwined, we will be more perfect.

The end of all things will not be lonely. I will not be imprisoned in memory.

_Aiat:_ We will be together forever, or else I will be wormfood.

* * *

At 10 o'clock, on the dot, the elevator rumbled to life.

Akko shot up in her seat. "Diana?!" she said, briefly scrubbing her face. Amanda bolted awake, wand pointed at the ceiling but ready to blast if it was not Diana. Lotte squealed, recoiling from the elevator, and then watched its slow ascent.

Waiting was torture.

Slowly, it ground back down to Earth, where all of the tenants of Constanze's secret room waited for the return of their last housemate.

Diana was not standing on the platform. She was sprawled across it, curled fetally. Before she returned, she would always discard her mask and clothes in a cleaner that Prof. Nelson had thoughtfully installed, shower, blast herself with disinfectant magic, and then and only then descend the elevator. So she wore not what uniform she bore going out, but in pillowy-soft spider-silk pajamas sewn by Jasminka and fluffened by Lotte plumping up the spirits of the silk. Her hair was pooled around her in a verdant halo. Her eyes were red, her face blotchy with despair, her cheeks shining with tears.

The elevator gate opened.

"Diana?" Akko whispered.

"Take this poison from my lips," Diana whimpered. "It's all too much, goddammit, [it's all too much...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpPzGT9_3o)"


	5. Nothing is Real

Akko bumped the light switch with her elbow, and the shower lights clapped on. The walls were white tile printed with that color pattern from American drinking cups, ten showerheads evenly spaced around the room and a hot tub big enough for four to seat luxuriously or the lot trapped down here to sit shoulder-to-shoulder. This was Akko's target, and she paced across the cool tile floor with Diana in her arms.

Diana was limp, like a doll, her head heavy on Akko's chest. She imagined trying to get Diana naked while she was like this and it felt a little too much like undressing a corpse. In fact, it was terribly vivid a feeling, enough that it invited disaster to do so,

_(I will not be imprisoned in memory)_

so Akko muttered ["We're doin' it live,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptiofd3x-cE) and stepped into the hot tub.

She draped Diana out in the water, then let her go and stepped back. Her face was just above the still, clear, steamy water; her hair hung about her head in a halo of cornsilk and pale green, her silk pajamas draped shapelessly about like a bedsheet.

She was breathing, steadily, her body weightless, ethereal.

Akko sat slowly, sinking up to her collarbone in the water, and watched Diana.

Diana's eyes fluttered closed, and her breathing steadied. She hung still in the water, her hair and clothes moving gently in the faint current. She held her hands under the water; Akko saw now that they were hot pink and peeling. How many times had she washed her hands today? They hadn't been that bad since the start of the pandemic, back before she had developed her touching-things discipline.

The only sound was of their faint breathing and the watery echo inherent to rooms like this.

Don't stop breathing, Akko thought. Don't close your eyes forever.

There was a gulf of time that Akko didn't bother trying to count. When her fingers became pruney, noticably so, she counted to a hundred, stood up, and plucked Diana out of the water, setting her on the tile beside the hot tub.

"Okay," Akko said, still up to her waist in the hot tub. "Now we're going to have to get you ready for a shower." She braced herself. "This is gonna be weird for both of us, but..."

Diana sat up. "I can do that," she said, her voice tremulous. With some effort she pulled her soaking pajama top over her head, casting it to the side. Akko crawled out of the tub and stripped herself, laying her clothes in a little pile.

Akko opened the shower supply closet. Staring her in the face was a box with a glass front. A bright red label read PUNCH ME LIKE YOU KNOW YOU WANNA. Akko punched it; the fake glass shattered into a harmless powder, revealing rows of Good Soap. She took out the wrapped bars one by one and sniffed them, settling on a Nag Champa bar that smelled like someplace that had to be better than here.

Diana placed a plastic stool below a showerhead and turned it up nice and hot. She sat with her back facing the showerhead, water pouring down her in healing rivulets. It seemed impossible that she could get more clean than she already was; all that remained was to make her feel clean, not briefly spared from contagion.

Akko unwrapped the bar and held it under the flow. A rich, aromatic scent seemed to fill the showers from floor to ceiling, woody and herbal, warm and rich. Diana sighed softly at the scent of it, and Akko tended to Diana's hair.

The bar was not just a rectangle; it was molded with pebbly little studs on one side, and Akko rubbed that end along Diana's scalp, infusing her hair with thick foamy suds of scent, that razor-like sharp scent of a bar of soap getting wet for the first time.

Akko massaged Diana's back, under her arms, along her thighs. Diana, a washcloth in hand, soaped it up and attended to her face and elsewhere. Akko held up Diana's leg and rubbed away at her feet; her lady would be like a walking basket of patchouli, by Maiden Mormo.

When it seemed that there was nothing else to lather up, Diana stood at last and rinsed herself off, delicately wringing out the wavy locks of her hair. Akko de-soaped her hands, which now smelled amazing, and fetched a pair of the fluffiest towels in the supply closet. (Those were not for emergencies; Constanze wanted to ration out the good soap, just in case, but fluffy towels were a basic human right.)

Diana insisted on taking care of her own hair, which tonight meant pinning it up and wrapping a towel around them. Akko wrapped herself in a terrycloth robe.

Still in silence--aside from a few ticklish giggles from Diana, neither of them had spoken through the entire affair--they popped on slippers and exited through to the private bedroom.

The private bedroom had no set owner. When someone needed it, it was theirs. Stanbots kept it pristine and anodyne, the precise midpoint of the New Nine's aesthetic tastes. Tonight, it was just Diana and Akko's.

They lay besides each other, staring at the ceiling, which was decorated with kitschy glow-in-the-dark stars which, by some great symbolic collision, appealed to every one of the Nine equally. (Even Chariot and Croix, though they were not present in this quarantine circle, and may be dead, for it had been over a month since anyone had seen Chariot teach, and Croix hadn't sent any communiques since before the quarantine.)

Akko wished, though it was not enough, that they wouldn't have to say anything. That the night would pass, and in the morning, Diana would be better; not healed, that would be too much to ask, but better. There were things that never needed to be said, she believed, and there are worlds that deserved to spin in darkness alone.

But the silence could last only so long, and the wound could be left to bleed only so long.

"We lost too many today," Diana said.

Akko lay her head against Diana's.

"Children. _Kids,_ Akko. They just wanted to go to a birthday party. They just..."

Diana burst into fresh tears, and Akko sat up and let her bawl into her lap. Akko wept, too, curling protectively over Diana, sobbing into her own knees.

When Akko was young--God, when she was practically a baby--she believed that magic could do anything. When she first arrived at Luna Nova, she believed magic could save the world.

When she and Diana had watched the Earth spin below them, the roots of Yggdrasil fading into invisible currents, it had felt like everything would be alright.

But.

Magic had its weaknesses.

It had no protection against disease; it could inflame disease, it could spread it, but healing was out of the question. When Bernadette Cavendish set out to heal the sick, it was not with magic, but with mortal science. The Cavendishes had done much to advance the cause of magical disease-alleviation, finding work-arounds that matched the brilliance with which they dispensed curses and knit together destroyed bodies, and Diana had told everyone about these methods: purifying and enhancing the quality of air to reduce the need for ventilators, strength enhancement to bulk up struggling lungs, Blossom Freshness auras to scrub the world clean at a rate unfeasible with mundane methods.

Bernadette Cavendish died of a wasting disease caught from one of her patients. Neither science nor magic could save her.

It was true that every time Diana stepped out into the world before the plague, there was a chance she would die. Accident, monster attack, the hypothetical bus that would scare people into not waiting for a deathbed confession. But here and now, in the world that is, every day she checked in to Glastonbury hospital and commit herself to the task that killed her mother.

Because it was right and good to do, and because she had the skills to do it.

It would be wrong to tell her to stay away. It would be wrong to encourage her to let the disease run its course, however many years it would take, if it would ever abate at all. It would be wrong to give up.

But the plague refused to abate; for the weakness was not in magic, but in man.

They wept together. There were no words.

* * *

It was four in the morning when Diana spoke again.

"Dr. Junejo put me on leave," she said. Her head rest on Akko's belly.

"Like a vacation?" Akko said, regrettin the words too late.

"For psychiatric purposes," Diana said. "Five days."

"When was the last time you took more than one day off a week...?" Akko said.

Diana furrowed her brow. "...I think... April."

"You need this," Akko said. "You can't fight full-time."

Diana opened her mouth. Closed it. Sighed.

"Your mother would be so proud," Akko said. "But... she'd want you to rest, too."

"...Akko..." Diana said. Her voice hitched. "Can... can we watch a movie?"

Akko lifted her head, looked down at her.

"I don't think I'll be sleeping soon. And I don't want to be in my head any longer than I have to."

"...yeah," Akko said, sitting up. "Let's put something on. Maybe a superhero movie. Would that be cool?"

"It would be amazing."

"Eenie. Meenie. Miney... Black Panther it is," Akko said, feeling for the remote. (For there was a TV here.)

"I like that one," Diana said, numbly.

Akko fell asleep midway through the film. Diana watched all the way through to the end, watched the TV return to the streaming service's menu.

Mom, she thought.

(Don't call it a prayer.)

If you can hear me, she thought; if there is a place where these words can be heard.

I love you, and I miss you, every day.

When I raise my voice in joy, it is your joy I feel. When I work magic, it is your power that connects my intent to my arm. My mercy is the mercy you taught me; my name is an honor I've vowed to uphold, whatever horror should crawl out of the pit and challenge me...

Diana trembled. A storm of thoughts burst in her head, screaming and crying and burning and roaring, and she clenched her fist and stilled them all with one word.

" _Lyonne_."

Mother, she thought. If you hear me: I am loved, and I am safe.

She fell asleep, after a while. The TV shone a blank blue face on Akko and Diana curled together in sleep.

No dreams. [The night was kind.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjhbVXuJCvY)


	6. Your Night Is Spent

Diana lifted the dice cup, revealing a six and a thre. "Plus two Volatile," she said, crossing her arms in satisfaction. "I believe this means I thrash Johannes with one hand behind my back, as promised."

Lotte and Akko chorused "Oooooh!" Jasminka swooned. Sucy seethed, forking over a fiver to Amanda, who wasn't even playing.

On Lotte's viewing globe, Annabel Creme nodded. "You trade blows briefly, but only briefly; Johannes can't hope to keep up with your stony skin and razor talons. He's on his knees, bloodied, hopeless, just gorgeous in the moonlight. His blood smells like ambrosia. Laura Singh, successor to the Clan of Singh, what do you do?"

"Yo!" Akko said, holding up her hand. "I'm spendin' a String for the bonus and Shutting Her Down before she gets her munch on!" She rattled her dice in hand. "I'm gonna slide in real dramatic-like an' shout 'No-o-o-o-o'!" She threw down, and a massive thump shook the entire room.

Everyone present grabbed their seats, save for Lotte, who latched on to her viewing globe in terror. An indigo light passed through the room moments after everything stopped shaking.

"The hell was that?!" Amanda said, stepping out of Jasminka's pet closet. She had her wand in hand, ready to blast the hell out of anything breaking their way in through the elevator.

"Are you guys okay?" Annabel said. "I'm not getting anything over here, so if it's an apocalypse, it's a localized one."

"I have no idea if we're okay," Akko said, feeling around for her wand and locating it where it usually was. "Diana, you're you. Do you know what that is?"

Diana furrowed her brow. "I think I do. It's been a long time since I've seen a spell like this. Purple light, shockwave..." She touched the side of her neck. "Do you feel different than usual?"

Akko shrugged. "Not really."

"Lotte. Yourself?"

"I feel..." Lotte said, thinking very hard. "I feel like I'm pretty tough." She flexed, achieving nothing.

On the viewing globe, Annabel mimed rubbing Lotte's bicep.

"Sucy? Amanda?" Diana said.

"Yeah," Amanda said, "I feel like twice as cool as normal."

"So this is what good health feels like," Sucy said, disappointed.

"I was feeling it, too," Diana said. "Giddy. Too much energy. Much tougher than normal... it must not hit Akko the same way because of her enhanced body."

"So somebody cast a buff spell on us?" Jasminka said. She and Constanze had popped out of the collection room. "That's nice of them."

"But who?" Diana said, just as her phone buzzed. Everyone's phone buzzed. A picture-in-picture popped in the corner of Annabel's phone call.

Croix filled the screen, flipping up a pair of heavy goggles. She spoke through a The Protomen face mask. "Good evening, Luna Nova." Indeed, it was nine o'clock, good and dark, and behind her, the stars glittered on an unusually clear evening. "I know you're not big fans of me experimenting on you, but..."

The camera she had--maybe it was just a phone--shifted, and now tilted down at an enormous spell circle burnt into the grass by seven metal runes. At the center of the circle, connected to the runes by glittering silver wires, was a tall, thin bell. "I couldn't help but notice that there's a pretty serious plague going on. And I thought to myself: Croix, didn't you find a few of the nearly-extinct runes dedicated to the Earth-King, Mantorok? The only witchgod that gives a toss about sad little humies like us?

"So. I called up a friend." She pivoted the camera, revealing Chariot kneeling in the grass, looking exhausted. In the dark, with the sparse lighting of a phone camera and a cloth mask, it was impossible to tell her expression, but her eyes glinted behind her glasses. "And, because there's a big rally going on in Londin in a few days where a bunch of anti-mask jackasses are gonna demonstrate, well. I had to practice this somewhere.

"You're all under the effects of the Breathing Rite of Mantorok. Until sunrise, you're going to resist disease at..." She gestured to Chariot.

"I don't know," Chariot said. "They don't use a specific number, just a word that means 'a thousand' figuratively."

"Catching things will be harder," Croix said. "So keep your damn masks on and you won't have to worry about a thing. Come on out, kids, the air's delicious. And, uh, Cavendish? Get me your email, I'll send you my notes."

Diana looked around at the gathered seven.

Akko already had her Shiny Chariot face mask on. "Well?" she said. "Wanna... wanna get some fresh air?"

* * *

Props to the fairy janitors, who were not only getting more mana than they had in decades, but were still doing their jobs when there was practically nobody around to care. The Verdant Viceroy coven's room was free of dust and smelled faintly of pine.

The halls of Luna Nova were dimly lit for lights-out. The seven had waited, at Diana's insistence, to avoid the initial rush of witches escaping their confinement at once. Not everyone had the debatable fortune of being locked in a bunker for half a year. "The rush," too, was of a debatable existence; those witches whose homes were in range of a sorcerer's stone had returned shortly after quarantine began. There were maybe a third of the normal witch population in Luna Nova.

And all were out on the lawn, laughing, crying, playing, praying before the statues of Gorgo-Mormo.

The air was alive with broom-flight. Amanda joined those fliers at once, sounding her terrific joy at the top of her lungs, Cons just behind her and firing her gun-wand into the air on full auto. Jasminka flung wrapped candies at everyone she saw, though to little effect as many ran screaming from her trailing army of opossums and Goliath tarantulas romping about free at last.

Sucy looked for Wangari, who had erected a monument to the agonizingly recent departure of her most favorite of favorite celebrities. Akko, too, dropped at Wangari's shrine to pay her respects, though Wan had put maybe a little more into mourning than she was comfortable with. Though, props on wearing her mask even with all those veils.

She reconnoitered with Diana just outside the New Moon Tower, under the glow of the sorcerer's stone.

Diana took her time walking up to Akko. The wind blew softly, the sweet scent of the grass and night-flowers overwhelming her, the rustle of the grass beneath her feet intoxicating, the freedom of the endless starry sky overhead. The stars--Mother Mormo, the stars!

She looked up at the sky, at the scarred moon, and blessedly she did not weep, but less-blessedly the strength left her legs and she collapsed. Akko caught her, just barely, and set her on the grass, the better to just... look.

After a moment, Akko lay beside her, the cool, dewey grass tickling her cheeks, hair, and the back of her thighs.

[ Tonight, the words came readily.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPeBCmtI9lc)

"Something I have come to despise," Diana said. "That human beings can get 'used' to everything. To think, we live with this beautiful, endless thing over our heads all our lives--to think that the beauty of the universe is with us forever and always--and it is only in fleeting, delicate moments that we realize its beauty."

"There's that guy on YouTube--" Akko bit her lip. "...aww, dang it. It's a special moment and I brought YouTube into it."

Diana touched her shoulder. "Akko. If you bring more mundane nonsense into this conversation... I will be ecstatic." She tugged off her mask; Akko felt a spike of panic before she realized that it was just her and Diana, with nobody else in sight, and a magic whatsit making them harder to catch sick. "Tonight... we can pretend." She rolled over onto Akko. "Pretend like it's not the end of the world."

"Well..." Akko said. "It's not, really, is it? This year has sucked as hard as a year can suck. But things looked pretty bad when that nuke was in the air. Right up until we saved the world."

She pulled her own mask off and touched Diana's bare cheek. In the night air, the holy shape of Diana a blot against the stars, it was like touching her for the first time, at the climax of that great battle in the exosphere. "There's still time," Akko said. "If we believe--and if we act. _Phaidoari Afairynghor_."

"'You don't always get what you want,'" Diana sang.

"'But if you try sometimes,'" Akko said, kissing Diana's chin, "'you might find...'"

They kissed.

The wind was cool, the dew-dappled grass cooler still; in that chill night their kiss was a furnace, and the simple kiss turned into a needy, desperate, open-mouthed makeout, a kiss which was a frenzy, a physical act of love so necessary it was a need. Their tongues danced, parried, in each other's mouths, Akko combed her fingers through Diana's plush, luxurious hair; Diana's hands crept down Akko's sides and squeezed her ass. That was a traditionally Akko sort of move. Tonight, when the wrongness of the world was topsy-turvy, why not borrow your lover's favorite technique?

Nobody was here to watch but the stars, after all.

The stars, and their guest watching from the threshold of the New Moon Tower.

* * *

Lotte sat hand-in-hand with her wife, Lilou, on the roof of the dormitories.

([It's a very long story.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12113934/chapters/27470223))

With her viewing globe in her lap, Annabel joining in their rooftop vigil of Luna Nova in the dark, it was as close as she'd come to having both of her loved ones together at the same time.

Lilou's hair billowed in the sudden wind. "I'm sorry, Lotte."

"Don't be sorry," Lotte said, kissing her cheek. "I know it's been a bad year, but... well, at least I have you with me again. It's the one beautiful thing about this whole awful year."

"It's not the plague that brings me here tonight," Lilou said, hardly above the sound of the wind.

"...what is it?" Lotte said, her heart skipping a beat.

Somewhere far off, there was a sudden, shocking blast of attack magic.

"[Darkness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3NLHF6oV4Q)," Lilou said.


	7. Her Majesty

Diana fell into Akko's arms, gasping for breath, suddenly, awfully chilled. Indigo flame guttered on her uniform's back.

Akko cried out her name and rolled her over onto her back, smothering the flame. She drew her wand, aimed it behind her, and shouted " _Paroi_!" Green slats of magic force burst from the grass between her and their new guest. She turned her wand on Diana and worked the meager healing spell she knew to cast: " _Allesfur Dieliebe_." Diana's breathing steadied as warmth began to flow back into her.

Akko turned her head to the New Moon Tower and her entire brain hitched at the sight of the woman walking out of its shadowy doors.

Akko recognized that melodramatic cloak that Diana loved to wear over her uniform in cold weather; more importantly, she recognized the movement of that figure, the specifics of her build, the way her voluminous hair flounced about her head in the wind. But for the physical contours of her body resembling Diana, everything else about her...

Her arms and legs had about them a pale white glow which outlined every detail of her appearance, down to the stitching on her skirt. Only--a glow should've cast light on her surroundings. The luminous brightness at her feet did not share its light with the grass.

At Diana's elbows and halfway up her waist, the un-light abated, and a thick, tarry substance matted her uniform, her neck, her face and hair. Maybe it was her imagination, but... she could just barely see Diana's eyes in that darkness, half-lidded, unfocused, almost drowned out by the cyclopean un-light burning between her eyes.

"Akko," this Diana said. "It's not too late..." She held up her wand, grasping its haft in her free hand. Her wand was wrapped tight with a brutal-looking rose, its thorns like barbed wire, and foul ichor leaked where this monster-Diana of all monster-Dianas held it tight and sighed in relief. "We can set this all right."

Akko blurted out the first words in her head: "Please don't hurt yourself! You've been so good at fighting the urge, you can stop it again!"

The monster-Diana froze--briefly. Before her entire body was wracked in spasms that twisted her whole body out of order, like someone was twisting keys in her muscles. "A-a-a-kko," this-Diana said. "I haven't fought the urge for five hundred and thirty-nine years. This pain has been my only confidante..." She was forced back into position, and took a step closer, aiming the wand at the shield. "My goad, my wine, my memory. Everything hurts. For you, I have felt--"

"I don't want you to hurt yourself, not for me, not for any reason!" Akko said, pulling her Diana up to her chest, and Diana put her arm around her waist reflexively. "Hurting yourself is never called for!"

Monster-Diana tilted her head curiously. She didn't immediately respond.

"Look," Akko said. "I don't wanna hurt you if I don't have to. But if you're some kind of ghost-Diana or something... go back home. Or like give me a minute to look up an exorcism spell so you can pass on or whatever. I'm not buying what you're selling and you look like everything Diana's been trying to fight against her entire life and she will not be happy if she sees you."

The monster-Diana made a noise no human throat could survive making, crouching, aiming her wand straight at the shield. "The last thing she'll see is the holy sharpness of my fangs. I am no ghost. I am Diana Cavendish, the Maw of Oryx. I am _Taken_."

A jet of blazing solar fury lept from the midnight-black rose between the tines of her wand.

* * *

Echo Mesa raced past Hilde as she kicked Last Love into gear. "I'm en route," she said over her commlink. "I'm guessing I'm looking for the Pyramid Scale that's giving off all that smoke?"

"It's bad," Titania said over her comm. "The ritual was complete by the time we got here. We have Hive activity, repeat, Hive are on Io. At least three Wizards and five Knights..." A pause.

"Taken Vex are in play. A Taken temporal construct is in play where the Pyramid Shard has injected an abundance of Darkness."

Hilde groaned. "Damn it. I hate Taken Vex." She saw a decently high ramp of mossy stone approaching, so she kicked Last Love on a path into it, roared off at top speed, and popped a bitchin' aileron roll.

Duessa interrupted the conversation with a terrified squeal. "Taken Wizard! Taken Wizard! So many thrall!"

"They're not hard!" Hilde said, veering into a trio of Vex scouts and spearing the lead, breaking it appart into Vex-milky fragments. They fired on her as she kept on her way, but to no real effect. "Or, wait--you don't have an SMG on you? Or an AR?"

"Hand cannon, sniper rifle," Titania said, with the familiar cadence of speaking while punching her way through the least minions of the Darkness.

"Dang it, Dewey," Hilde said, and almost resisted the urge to launch over a crevasse. Almost.

* * *

Akko hurled herself behind a standing stone, bolts of the purple stop-feeling-alive magic hissing over her head. "Diana!" she shouted.

"I await your hand, Akko!" the Taken Diana said, her voice echoing impossibly from where she stood.

"No, real Diana!" Akko said, looking up over cover and getting another pair of bolts from Taken Diana for the effort. "Ah, jeez, lady!"

"I'm more real than she could ever be!" Taken Diana said, a thick bank of clouds building around her, lightning dancing between them. "I am more powerful, more beautiful. Free from--"

Diana's spell interrupted her. She'd borrowed Akko's favorite move in a make-out; why not borrow her favorite go-to attack spell? "Fusilo!" A magic missile streaked from her cover behind a statue of the Triple Goddess, impacting Taken Diana in the side. A dull orange glow lit where the bolt struck her.

"She's got a shield!" Akko said. "Like a sci-fi shield, I mea--" The clouds wafted over Akko like a bank of fog, and lightning arced into her head.

It was here that Akko learned the trivia fact that the most painful thing in the world is an ungrounded jolt of electricity through the brain. She was down and spasming on the ground, her while world whited out with pain.

"Akko!" Diana said, popping from out of cover. She sprinted, low to the ground and popping off Fusilo bolts at her monstrous copy, putting her on the defense. Taken Diana counterspelled with floating orbs of force that intercepted Diana's spells. Diana vaulted Akko's rock. Her enemy didn't immediately open fire on her, so she presumed something terrible was about to happen.

She lay her wand on Akko's head and whispered, " _Anne Sevgisi_."

Akko sat up, nearly headbutting Diana. "'mup!" she said. "What'd I miss?" She worked her jaw around. "Did I swallow my tongue? Oh, crap, I forgot my mask! I--"

Diana took her by the arm and ran, Akko getting the picture and first following, then pulling Diana into her arms and running at full speed as Taken Diana's full-force arc-spell churned the ground to waste and shattered the stone into hot fragments that pelted Akko's back.

Akko skidded to a halt as a riot of flame interposed between her and freedom.

Taken Diana marched closer, chanting up a follow-up spell.

"On three," Akko said, dropping Diana, who landed expertly on her feet. "Fusion spell."

The air behind Taken Diana began to bleed and peel, as if something were gnawing a wound in reality. Through the wound they could see an alien world of soft gray stone, patchy, mossy plant-life, and an ongoing outer-space firefight with horrible inky robots that moved with uncannily organic smoothness and things that were not quite insects and not quite corpses and definitely were throwing around black magic at figures that they couldn't make out through the sheer volume of energy lacing the air on the other side of the gate.

"Three," Diana said. "Ein ein sof!"

"Ein sof ohr!" Akko said.

Golden light gathered at their wands, building in strength, before Taken Diana issued a pronouncement that split the air. A column of searing darkness burst from her chest, washing over Akko and Diana; Luna Lana guttered dead, snuffed out, and something ice-like which was not ice crawled up Akko and Diana's wands, up their arms, and engulfed their bodies, locking them into a bitter, icy stasis.

It was so very hard to breathe.

" _Useless_ ," Taken Diana said. "So useless, the lies of the Light. I can smell the holy perfume of despair emanating from this doomed world. Can't you see? Can't you believe the evidence of your senses?" She gestured grandly as the wound in the air ripped open wide, a bloody and awful maw. The horrible monsters on the other side turned away from the firefight--which was abundantly in their favor anyhow--and cast their three-eyed and one-eyed gaze to the vulnerable world on the other side.

Taken Diana walked up to Akko, stroking her frozen face. Taken Diana gasped in delight as the sharp edges of the not-ice cut her hand. "Don't..." Akko whimpered.

Diana stared through her cage of ice and fought back tears.

"Let this place burn to ash," Taken Diana said. "It's too far gone to save; has been too far gone to care about for longer than either of you have been alive. Let it die. Join the Darkness. So much despair, so much pain... the people of Earth will fatten the ranks of the Taken--the new Taken of Savathun, the Witch-Queen."

Once, when Akko was a kid, she had sat in a sun-warmed pool while fresh water was poured into it. The fresh water had been icy-cold, a vivifying shock interlaced with the soothing warmth. That was the feeling of the wind blowing from the alien world behind Taken Diana, only the cold was not electrifying and awakening but bitter and deadening. Not the cold of a bright day when anything can happen; the cold of a dark, endless winter, where the last life was gone and summer was a fading memory. Fimbulwinter, she thought.

"We can be together again," Taken Diana said, her mouth open, trembling. Here she could smell Taken Diana's breath and see the broken-glass jags of her teeth, and it was difficult to ascertain which was worse. "Together until the end of all things. Together... we can be a perfect, final shape." She pressed her wand against Diana's forehead. "Once we are done erasing this mistake."

Diana closed her eyes. _Mother, I'm here,_ she thought.

There was a sharp, shocking _crack_ , [and Diana was still alive.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=163_C5UVU-I)

Taken Diana stumbled back, a bright orange glow over her forehead; one more, and the shield burst with a pleasant sound.

"Get the _fuck_ away from my students!" Prof. Nelson said. Not that either Akko nor Diana could turn their head to look, but she was side-saddle on a broom, aiming down the sights of a vintage M1 Garand with a bayonet hanging from the mount. Not that she knew it, but she was continuing the grand tradition of Prof. Nelson shooting Taken Diana right in the head.

"Hold still," Sucy said, her head suddenly between the frozen witches. She uncorked and poured a potion vial over their heads, the curse receding and warmth returning. They knelt and caught their breaths, shivering. "You forgot your masks, by the way."

Akko tried to laugh sarcastically, but her teeth were too busy chattering.

"No matter--" Taken Diana said, and another shot rang out, and a bullet streaked through the portal and into her back, interrupting her.

More spells began to fly past Akko and Diana, impacting the Taken Diana.

"Get the hell away from my friends!" Amanda said, hurling rapid-fire blasts at the fiend.

"We don't serve evil space monsters on this campus!" Jasminka said from atop a mountain of possums and Goliath bird-eating tarantulas forming a stable firing platform for her magicked-up DP-27, which chattered gleefully as she opened fire.

Constanze hit a button on a Stanbot. "By the Power of Grayskull!" the Stanbot played as it transformed into a massive attachment for Cons's gun-wand, "I have the powerrrrrrr!" Cons slapped the attachment on, took aim, and blasted a stream of plasma-jacketed protons into Taken Diana, eliciting a hateful screech.

Sucy hurled vials of poison and explosive pots at the fiend. "Nobody gets to fuck with Akko except me. ... and Diana, I guess."

"Thank you, Sucy," Diana said.

"Don't rub it in..." Sucy said.

The entirety of Luna Nova--every teacher, every student here--joined the firing line building behind the New Nine. And that really was the New Nine; Chariot fired a blistering attack spell into Taken Diana as a phalanx of Croix's drones emptied bolts into her, and Lotte sang a high and holy song that battened the world against the ritual the invader was still trying to complete.

Soon Taken Diana was backed into her portal. She grasped the bleeding sides, absorbing an endless barrage of fire. "This isn't enough," she said, supernally audible over the furious racket of dozens of attack spells. "You can't stop this. You could never stop this! This pitiful world doesn't have the strength or the will to stop this! The Darkness will be eternal!"

"Hey!" a new voice said from the other side of the portal, amplified over a speaker of some kind. A figure clad in bright yellow... space-robes? An armored spacesuit draped with cloth?

"Nice people in the past or whatever! I see you too have the Light on your side!"

"What...?!" Taken Diana said, looking over her shoulder. "No. It can't be--"

"It always is, dumbass," the woman said, flipping her off. "Nothing can stop us from saving the universe. We've killed things that shouldn't even be able to be seen, much less shot. We've broken your Taken King and put him in a gun and locked the gun up so he can't even kill things by proxy. We've had the Light shut off from us, and we still fought, and we got it back.

"You people over there--I know it looks rough, right? But you can't stop fighting. You can still make things right. The future will belong to us, if we believe."

"We'll always believe!" Akko said, bringing her wand to bear. "A believing heart is our magic!"

"That's the spirit," the nice future lady said. "On three, we're beating her ass."

Two other people in fancy future gear joined her. They glowed with a magic light so potent it seemed to bring day to the night, even on the Earth side of the portal.

"Three!" Diana said. " _Ein ein sof_ \--"

" _Ein sof ohr!_ " Akko said.

" _Wakanda forever!_ " Wangari said.

Diana and Akko's Luna Lana was nearly lost for the chorus of attack names shouted into the night; and the light storm of dozens of the strongest attack spells every witch present knew blinded them as they all lanced Taken Diana.

* * *

The agony was cutting, clear, and true. She could feel her essence scald away to nothing. She had died innumerable times before, had come back stronger each time; but between two worlds, between two universes, between two echoes in time, her essential being was pulled too thin, was being shredded too finely, by too much.

She heard the snap of three Guardians' Supers popping behind her.

Five hundred and thirty-nine years of history, of pining, of agony, of death and the spreading of terror and the devouring of worlds, and it was all for nothing; all for nothing as flaming hammers of Light, as furious cannon-shots from the Golden Gun, as that awful warlock-child's beam of Arc Light ripped the shadow of her being apart.

Her last vision was of Atsuko Kagari and Diana Cavendish--a stronger, more real Diana Cavendish, never lost to Darkness, who had come to despair so many times and had each time come back stronger, so much stronger than even the most abyssal depths of the Darkness could ever be.

Taken Diana knew the name of the thing which killed her; the purest strength of Light, which is Love.

* * *

The monster which had dared assume Diana's shape screamed its last, and was gone, her abyssal hypermatter burnt to nothing.

There was a great and echoing silence. A stillness.

"We did it," Diana said.

"No, really?" Sucy said. "I thought we were all gonna die."

"Hush," Akko said, giving her a playful, gentle slap. Sucy blushed.

The three future people approached their end of the portal.

"Huh..." the yellow one said, gently prodding the edges of the portal with a fancy space gun. "These usually turn off when we're done shootin' the monsters."

"Periodically," the enormously tall one clad in hulking and ornamental power armor, "these things persist well past their standard duration, often to impart a lesson to the attentive Guardian."

"Well..." the last, a figure who was half-hiding behind a very stylish cloak, "what lesson are we trying to learn here?"

"Hold on to my skirt," the yellow one said, and she stepped through the portal.

"Hilde--!" the nebbish one said.

The enormous one knelt and took the hem of Hilde's space-skirt delicately in her powered gauntlet.

Luna Nova collectively edged away from the visiting future person.

Not Akko, though, or Diana. They stepped forward unafraid. They'd met her before, after all.

"Hey, Hilde," Akko said, nervously. "How goes the space stuff?"

"Goes good," Hilde said, taking off her helmet. Hilde was a young lady of fair countenance and faintly curly blonde hair framing a face with an easy smile. It was a strangely familiar face.

Or, maybe, the midpoint between two familiar faces. "Well, maybe not 'good,' things have been, like, crazy-scary lately. We've, uh... we've lost a lot of friends." Her expression fell. "The Darkness has been laying it on thick. And I wish I could say we're doing better than we were last time."

Diana reached out and touched her future daughter's face.

"It'll be alright," Diana said. "I believe in you."

"Man, it's been terrible here too," Akko said. She took her future daughter's hand. "Like, man. It's been hard to find a reason to smile lately."

"But here you are," Hilde said. "Fighting the good fight. And smiling again."

[ She scooped her parents into a massive hug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maMc3Qi4m1o). Akko and Diana returned it in kind.

"We'll make it," Akko said. "I promise. I'll make sure."

"Guys," Hilde said, her smile turning crooked in a way that melted her mothers' hearts, "I am the luckiest Guardian alive. The absolute luckiest."

"I love you," Akko said.

"I love you so much..." Diana whimpered.

"It's all worth it," Hilde said. "Everything you've been through. Everything I've been through. It's all worth it."

The wound began to heal. Hilde stepped back, hesitantly, picking up her helmet. "Keep it real, guys," she said, and ducked through the portal with plenty of time to spare. She flopped onto the ground and waved until the portal shut at last.

Akko and Diana held each other and slid onto the grass. A moment later, all their friends piled on top of them, a great big hug-pile that felt like proof that the world was, after all, inherently wonderful and good.

There was so much to say, and they all said it at once, jockeying for position: cheers, thanks, platitudes, badass quips, honest expressions of love unguarded.

The night would be over too soon. Lotte's beloved would part again, the spell would wear off, and the quarantine would resume. Croix would depart, resuming her search for the cure for Wagandea poisoning. Chariot would be so close, and so far, from her studentry, so far from the bright young witch she had increasingly thought of as part of her family.

But it would not be long before Croix's ritual would be perfected, and Diana tend to her troubled flock without fear;

and should the Light be with us, and should we be brave and do what is right, they would soon all breathe freely of the sweet air above.

* * *

The next morning was surprisingly uneventful. Or, wait, surprising how? They'd gone to bed after much weirder things and woken up feeling pretty normal. Yeah, it was in fact pretty usually uneventful. Which is redundant.

For once, there had been no nightmares of another Diana. That helped.

For another...

Diana looked up from her phone. "Akko. What is that I'm smelling?"

"Oh, hey Diana!" Akko said from the kitchenette. "I ordered these s'mores Pop Tarts from the US and they just came in! So I'm making some for break--"

The toaster popped with the noise of a giant machine dying a real bad death, and Akko squawked with terror and tripped over her own feet. "Son of a bitch!" she said, rubbing her head.

"When did they make toasters so dang scary?"

Diana helped her up to her feet and gestured to the toaster:

FIVE NIGHT'S AT FREDDY'S  
FREDDY'S OFFICIAL TOASTER  
Never Forget Another Piece Of Toast!  
It Is Unclear Why You Would Want This(tm)

"Oh, right," Akko said. "That's Cons's novelty toaster she bought on eBay. The one that burns scary bear faces into everything!" She fished a s'more Pop Tart out of the toaster, revealing the faint image of a scary bear face on the frosting. "I keep forgetting about the jump scares..." she said, around a mouthful of s'more.

"What am I ever going to do with you," Diana chuckled.

"Love me forever~?" Akko said.

Diana kissed her. ["I believe I will."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh1hKt5kQ_4)


End file.
